Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Stymied Progress
There are many tragedies in Roy's book and not least among them is the separation of the twins and the effects they feel from the breaking of the love laws. Injustice is often cured over generations as the children learn from the parents and hopefully set their minds to do the right thing with their future, and the future's children. In evidence are the waning of the backwards walking days of the Untouchables. Society had come at least that far and will as likely progress. The twins however are marred by history and its clinging to its old ways. Their tragedy lies in separation and inability to overcome, socially, the love laws that ruined Ammu and Velutha. Had their love remained secret or nonexistent, the twins would have grown harboring their love for Velutha regardless of caste. They would have taught this to their children and slowly the love laws are rewritten over generations. With their separation and his death, they are turned inward and leave no effect on the greater social history, but rather consummate themselves and become whole again. They can overcome the love laws for themselves, but as far as we know (and can surmise) it is likely that their love will not positively affect the world around them. They may have healed a part of themselves by coming together, but the larger societal change they could have been a part of was stymied through the events of Roy's narrative. it's a novel about small things, but it is the nature of small things to gradually move mountains.
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The trickling progress which might have taken place over generations may have been stymied, but do you think there is a chance for more immediate societal reformation in the novel? The obvious answer is no, considering the novel ends with no sort of positive change whatsoever, but consider the question for the sake of this conversation. One of the largest problems I see in this novel, as well as in our own reality, is the fact that marginalized individuals allow the structures, which constrict their agency, to continue abusing their world without fighting for immediate change. We have seen this played out in history time and time again. Yes, change does eventually come, but there must be an circumstance waiting for us where change is possible in the immediacy, not in decades to come.
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